Juan Cole

The USG Open Source Center translates a Salafi history of the Sunni, Baluch terrorist group Jundu’llah in Iran, which is accused of carrying out anti-Shiite bombings. The Iranian regime maintains that the United States is behind Jundu’llah’s terrorist activities, as a means of destabilizing or even partitioning Iran. Jihadist Forum Member Posts Profile of Iranian […]

President Barack Obama’s withdrawal strategy for Iraq got a big bump this weekend, when the Iraqi military and police presided over massive gatherings of pilgrims from the provinces in the capital, and pulled it off with no bombings. Obama could not plausibly withdraw from Iraq unless Iraqi security forces could keep a minimum of social […]

The USG Open Source Center translates a communique of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr of Iraq, calling for continuous demonstrations. You have to wonder whether he is inspired by the big demonstrations in Iran. : Text of report by Higher Media Commission of Martyr Sayyid Al-Sadr’s Office on 17 July [Statement by Al-Sadr Trend Leader Muqtada […]

Today’s news is that Iran’s hard liners are not happy. AP reports that Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi accused former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani of encouraging further street protests by not condemning them in his Friday prayer sermon. (In fact, Rafsanjani demanded that imprisoned protesters be released, implying that they broke no law by protesting in the […]

From a friend of a friend in Tehran: The past couple of days everyone I met debated back and forth whether to attend Friday Prayer’s today or not. Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and one of the “founding fathers” of the Islamic Republic, was to give the sermon this week. This was the first time […]

What was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani trying to say in his Friday prayers sermon? (The text is below). The reform movement and its allies among pragmatic conservatives have developed a narrative about Khomeinist Iran. They allege that it is ultimately democratic, and that the will of the people is paramount. It is popular sovereignty that authorizes […]

The USG Open Source Center translates the second, political, portion of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s Friday prayers sermon. Iran: Rafsanjani Calls For Release of Detainees; Hopes To Resolve Current ‘Crisis’Second Friday Prayer sermon delivered by Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council at tehran University — liveVoice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Radio 1Friday, […]

Tehran Bureau has a collection of this and other amateur video from Friday in Iran. Posted at Youtube 7/17: The URL of Nico Pitney’s live blog of Iran events has changed, it is now here. End/ (Not Continued)

Aljazeera English now has a video report on Rafsanjani’s sermon and the Friday protests: Ghanbar Naderi points out that Rafsanjani has a long history of flip-flopping between the hard line and reformist camps. I would argue that this is because he is a pragmatic conservative, and his sermon today shows that he has concluded that […]